Few would willingly approach the Portuguese man-of-war's venomous tentacles. But biologist Alvaro Migotto of Brazil's University of Sao Paulo took the risk--and won sixth place in the 2009 BioScapes competition for this up-close image of the animal's bubblegum pink stinging cells.

A delicate muscular band surrounding the cells (seen in light purple) allow the tentacles to easily contract into a gas-filled, floating chamber.